Alexander Foote - Handbook for Spies

Throughout my stay in Russia I dealt at the special shops. I gathered that there were hierarchies in these as in so many other things and that the best of all these shops were those reserved for the theatrical profession. In them a ballet dancer, film star, or junior lead, earning about the same salary as a factory hand, could buy goods at a tenth of the price that the latter would have to pay at a commercial shop. Furthermore many goods in short supply were to be found only in the special shops and never filtered down to the commercial ones - even at the fabulous prices which prevailed there. The second best special shops, I was told, were those reserved for the Foreign Office, where among other things, suits, shirts, etc., could be bought at prices and of a quality which would compare favorably with prices in the rest of the world. I was led to understand by my more cynically - minded friends that this was designed to lessen the shock to the budding Soviet diplomat abroad exposed to the first impact of Western standards.

The third class in these special shops were those designed for the General Staff and in these I was allowed to buy. There I could purchase on my official salary at least ten times the amount that any worker earning the same sum in roubles could buy himself- and I was being given a salary which was drawn by few workers- but even so no one could say that I lived luxuriously by any Western standard. In fact my salary seemed to vary around eighteen hundred to two thousand roubles a month. It never seemed to be fixed and some months I received more and occasionally I was told that I had been overpaid the month before. This gave me the equivalent of twelve hundred pounds a year but if I had drawn my salary in roubles and spent it on the open market I should have lived at just above starvation level. As it was I used to buy all my rations and necessities at the General Staff shop and these purchases were signed for and the amount automatically deducted from my salary. The remainder of my pay I drew in cash and little good it was to me save for occasional tips. The difference in price can be seen from the fact that a packet of twenty- five cigarettes in the commercial shops was 45/ - while I purchased them for 4/6d. Similarly a box of matches which would be a penny farthing in the shop would be a few shillings in the open market.

I cannot complain as to my living conditions in Moscow. After all, I was living on the same scale as a Russian general. Equally there were no complaints from Olga or Ivan. Under Russian ration laws all the household draws the same ration as the head of the household and, as a result, while I was living in the flat they were drawing rations on the same scale as I. Nor when I first arrived in Russia were rations at all bad. The majority of the food that we drew was Lease-Lend material and we lived on excellent American canned products. After the end of the Japanese war, however, all Lease-Lend goods stopped and we then drew the equivalent amount of Russian rations and that was a very different thing. The food then, though still the same in quantity, deteriorated very quickly in quality; and the meat was often uneatable, and I for one got heartily sick of pickled cabbage - however excellent the quality.

As elsewhere in the world housing was a great problem in Moscow. A family which had more than one room could consider itself very lucky, or the head of the household was very privileged. Industrialisation has gone on apace but housing has lagged far behind. Factories and industrial undertakings were usually responsible for housing their employees but, faced with the difficulties of building and the shortage of supplies, they actually solved the housing problem by packing more people into the existing accommodation. Quite apart from the difficulties of building, the factories were also reluctant to build owing to the cost. Another factor that prevented building for workers was that all industrial undertakings were supposed to run at a profit and the heads of the organisations were reluctant to cut their paper profits and thus possibly incur wrath from higher up. This they would inevitably do if they indulged in building schemes, owing to the high cost of repairs and materials and the even higher cost of providing fuel for heating, which costs were inevitably far greater than any rent they might receive in return. Rent was limited to ten per cent of the tenant's income and in order to cover operating costs it was therefore necessary to pack every room to the absolute maximum.

The high building costs are also partially accounted for by the fact that it is only possible to carry out building operations during six months of the year owing to the climate. The building force, thrown out of work in the winter months, is usually occupied in snow-clearing, etc. The high operating costs are due to the high cost of fuel and the comparatively large labour force involved. Coal is in short supply in Russia and is not available for heating purposes save in public buildings. The usual winter fuel is wood and this has to be hauled, so far as Moscow and the large cities are concerned, from a long distance, as the forests near the large towns have been denuded long since. Wood-firing of the boilers means also that each block of flats must employ at least four and usually eight stokers and wood handlers as the boilers must be constantly fed throughout the twenty-four hours all winter long.

The block of flats in which I lived, 29 the 2nd Izvoznia Ulitza, was far from being a block of luxury flats by Western standards but would have seemed a paradise of luxury to the majority of the inhabitants of the Soviet Union. It had been built in 1938 as accommodation for the Red Army General Staff. It was also in sharp contrast to the surrounding jerry-built structures in having four-foot-thick walls and being built in an extremely solid fashion. This architectural style was not wholly in deference to the desire of the General Staff to be in a well-found building. The block was situated at a most convenient strategic position covering the important Mo- jaisk Chaussee and the Kiev Railway Station. I also noticed similarly well-constructed and solid fortresslike blocks of flats at other strategic points in the suburbs.

It will be remembered that the planning of the Paris boulevards under the Second Empire was not only for aesthetic reasons but also to give the imperial artillery a clear field of fire. Similar allegations were made regarding the workers' flats built by the Socialists in Vienna. The Moscow town planners learnt a lesson from their predecessors in imperial France and Socialist Austria and neatly combined in one building comfort for their army staff and the means of gratifying the same staff's tactical requirements.

In this block I had, as already mentioned, a two-room flat. Olga slept in the dining room and in theory Ivan and I slept in the bedroom. In fact after the first night Ivan deserted me and for the rest of my stay preferred the company of the housekeeper; from the point of view of comfort if not of morals I did not regret the change. There was also a bathroom, but this was more in the nature of an ornament, as hot baths were forbidden by law, the hot-water system disconnected, and all warm water for washing had to be heated on a stove.

The black market, however, penetrated even into this block, and the stokers ran a black market shower bath in the basement. I went there only once. In semidarkness, with the floor covered with mud and slime, and with no privacy whatever, they had rigged up one jet in the ceiling under which, for the payment of an exorbitant sum, one could gyrate beneath a trickle of warm water. The smell and the state of the floor put me off after my one attempt but I used to see the generals' wives, often swathed in looted furs, waiting their turn with their husbands.